Page:Bengali Religious Lyrics, Śākta.pdf/36

26 The theme and occasion of Āgāmani and Vijayā songs are as follows. Umā or Gaurī, daughter of Himālaya and Menakā, was married to Śiva, the Lord of Kailāsa, at the age of eight. The fable has had this unfortunate consequence, that every attempt to raise the legal age for marriage has been opposed by conservative Hindus with the cry of 'Gāuri dan,' 'The giving of Gaurī,' and a peculiar blessing has been asserted to rest upon a girl's marriage at the age of eight. But it has also furnished an outlet for the loneliness and grief of parents mourning their daughters gone from them so early, who have found their own sorrow mirrored in the legendary sorrow of the Great Goddess's parents. Dr. Dinesh Sen says, speaking of of the marriage of very young girls to old men, the situation created pathos too deep for expression. This situation, he suggests, is the real theme of the Āgāmanī poets. 'There are innumerable songs in Bengali, describing the pathetic situation. The domestic scenes of—Bengal the sorrows of Bengali parents—are really the themes of the songs, though they profess to deal with mythological subjects. . . . The girls here, of too tender an age to play the wife, are often taken away from the custody of parents. With veils over their faces, they have to stay in their husband's home, speak in whispers and subject themselves to the painful discipline of the daughter-in-law. . . . When the Āgāmani songs, describing the sorrows of Menakā and of Umā, her daughter, are sung by professional singers, the eyes of many a child-wife glisten behind her veil, and the hearts of their mothers cry out for the daughters who have been taken away from them.

The Durgā-pūjā falls in late September or October. Some fifteen days before, Āgāmani or advent songs are heard everywhere. The pūjā begins on the sixth day of the moon, when Umā (Durgā) revisits her parents for three days. Those parents have discovered that their son-in-law, the Lord of Kailāsa, is a